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talent

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting — Sun Tzu

It started with The War For Talent, McKinsey’s 1997 announcement that the world of commerce was now at risk. With increasingly emotive language, McKinsey described a “severe and worsening shortage of the people” resulting in unfilled jobs, failed business objectives, skyrocketing compensations packages, and CEOs who could not sleep at night. All are vulnerable, they wrote in bold. And while it would be possible to win the war for talent, this could only happen if you “elevated talent management to a burning corporate priority.”

Did you hear that? Burning.

The problem was unlikely to resolve, not during the tenure of our working lives anyway. The forecast, grim and uncompromising, promised that “companies (were) about to be engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of their competitive landscape for decades to come.”

Why such an apocalypse? The reasons included a shortage of 35-44 year olds to replace the baby-boomers who were retiring, competition from smaller companies, and increased job mobility. Oh, there were people around, but not enough good people. Anyway, good was the enemy of great; good was the new bad. You had to get rid of good, explained Jim Collins in his 2001 book Good To Great; you had to rinse the cottage cheese (make tiny changes that add up). And you had to do it now. Don’t forget the sleepless CEOs, striving to heed Collins’ advice and get the best people on the bus. They could have fatigue-induced cardiac arrest—and who on earth would replace them?

Firing was as important as hiring. McKinsey was bold enough to state it outright: “Our research suggests that taking action to deal with poor performers is…the least exploited talent-building lever for any company.” Building talent through firing concentrates the talent, you see, increasing productivity of those remaining if only through necessity.

Letting go, constructive discharge, downsizing, there is no nice way to describe firing. But the important thing was to get rid of unwanted talent-blockers, even whole departments (blockages) through whatever legal means possible. Use velvet gloves; trot out executive coaches and outplacement advisors. Make a note that you have fired them so that you don’t accidentally re-hire them again in your effort to recruit the best talent. Rinse that cheese…

So how are we doing twenty years past McKinsey’s critical call to action? Is the war for talent over? It is, sort of. But all wars leave casualties. As Josh Bersin from Bersin of Deloitte explained, “The war for talent is over. The talent won.”

In case you are not aware, companies moved from the war for talent to a crusade for engagement. The word crusade sounds lofty, but it is important to remember that crusades are just wars with passion. In this new crusade, companies must become charismatic, irresistible magnets for the best people (not good, not even great anymore, but the best). Luckily, Deloitte can help a company become irresistible. After two years of research and discussions with hundreds of clients (where did they find the people to do this?) they uncovered five major elements and underlying strategies that makes organizations irresistible.

Compensation is part of it, sure. Breathe easy: you can still buy people. But salary is just “a hygiene factor”, not an “engagement factor.” You have to make the best and brightest happy, not clean. Work has to be self-directed, dynamic, creative, all the things we don’t normally associate with the word work. In fact, let’s not call it work anymore. Let’s call it mission.

How do we get people to join our mission? Of course, training and support, autonomy, “clear and transparent goals”, but you also need to create a “humanistic environment.” Admittedly, I don’t know what a humanistic environment is; Deloitte seems to have borrowed the term from studies run by dental schools, but I believe it means having respect and compassion for those around you.

Google’s idea, and one that could only come from this extraordinary thinktank, was to give engaged people time “to think, create, and rest” and, frankly, I’m already feeling the draw. But you can only give such time to the best people—those with passion and mission and purpose, those given to moments of brilliance and inspiration. There is no point in allowing people time to think if they can’t think. Those people have to go.

Luckily, automation is helping companies get rid of people who shouldn’t be given time to rest and think. Companies may still be losing the war for talent, but they are progressing on the firing front. Advancements in data allow companies to tag individual employees in various ways to predict whether they will be useful five or ten years down the road. Through a series of complex algorithms and predictive analytics, companies are able to sift through their mission-supporters and deselect those they wish to exclude from their flexible, person-centric, humanistic environments. With the removal of the good (enemy to great) and with a closely focussed digitally enhanced eye on the great, it is possible to clear the way for the best.

Or so we hope. Recently, McKinsey launched a new look at the war for talent (see The New War For Talent), explaining that many of the old problems haven’t gone away, and adding more challenges to the mix. It would seem that the talent is still not cooperating. The new soldiers on the talent-front are millennials and, according to Forbes, “Millennials don’t want jobs. They want lives.” If companies seek to recruit them, it isn’t enough to be irresistible and woo them. If you are lucky enough to succeed in wooing them, you have to convince them the whole enterprise is their idea. To that end, companies are striving to create an entrepreneurial culture, as 72% of millennials want to be their own boss.

What have all those managers and C-suite leaders actually achieved since 1997? Their expectations on employees were so high, their standards so rigid, their firing so efficient, they’ve convinced the new generation of talent to self-exclude. Maybe the talent didn’t want predictive analytics that value them one against the other. Maybe the talent preferred to make their own luck than be subject to constant evaluation. While recent graduates struggle to find any work at all, millennials are stepping away from opportunities. In an interview with McKinsey, Ann Robie, global head of Human Resources at StubHub said, “The future of talent is that people are not actually wanting to be employees.”

And so it evolves, as war often does. Perhaps we can no longer call it a “war for talent” or a “crusade for engagement.” The landscape has changed, the battleground no longer defined by its original architecture. What we see is that command control originates from the opposing side. We’ve reached the age of “talent at war”. Or talent@war, if you prefer. #NotInterested